Spinal deformities and the challenge of correcting spinal deformities in young children are well known. Such deformities may include, but are not limited to, infantile scoliosis, neuromuscular scoliosis requiring fixation to the pelvis, spinal deformities with associated kyphosis, thoracic insufficiency syndrome with fused ribs requiring thoracostomy, and syndrome-related scoliosis. Various systems have been used in the past to treat pediatric patients suffering from spinal deformities such as the use of braces and casting, while other types of systems for treating spinal deformities include traditional spine implant systems and growth rods. These types of prior art systems and devices often have limited fixation points and may depend on periodic adjustment for systems that utilize growth rods in order to accommodate the natural spine growth of a pediatric patient. As such, this periodic lengthening and adjustment requires surgical intervention every time the device is required to be lengthened, thus putting additional strain on the young patient. A recent development in the field, the VEPTR technique, is considered an advancement in the field of correcting spinal deformities in pediatric patients, but utilizes an arrangement of growth rods that has limited fixation points along the spine and still requires subsequent surgical intervention for periodic adjustment of the growth rods as the pediatric patient grows over time. Furthermore, pediatric patients may be very small in stature and have thin posterior tissue, thus creating the necessity for a low profile system that corrects skeletal deformities using numerous and/or movable fixation points.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for a system and related method for a correcting a spinal deformity that does not require subsequent growth-related surgical intervention after the initial implantation of the system into a patient.